by postpunkmonk » Tue Jan 23, 2018 8:59 am
Hearing "Autobahn" in a brutal 3 minute edit as a child changed my life! It was a freak synth novelty hit as was mentioned earlier. Akin to "Popcorn" by Hot Butter or "Joy" by Apollo 100. I listened to top 40 radio seriously as a child and never heard that one enough but Kraftwerk stuck wth me and when I got stereo in 1978 and could buy records, the LP of "Autobahn" was one of the first I made certain to get. I had no idea it was an entire side until then. Agree that Kraftwerk probably got lumped into the Prog wave initially as Krautrock was deep underground in America at the time. It was probably seen in 1974-5 as something to listen to while waiting the three years in between Pink Floyd albums.
Also agree that by 1977's "Trans Europe Express" that Kraftwerk got US black radio play and developed there as a niche. Notice that they got an African American, Leanard Jackson [Rose Royce, Starguard] to co-mix their next album, "Man-Machine." In high school only the "black station" in not-very-integrated Central Florida played the hell out of "Computerworld" and it was a big hit with young men of color in my art classes, who got to play it on the boom box during class. To my vast enjoyment.
In the early 90s, I bought a UK 7" of the single to hear the edit once again. I bought one mail order and the mix was 3:05! Even shorter than I remembered. I recorded it and the disc had seen better days, so I ripped the CD track and edited it down on computer to replicate the UK 7" edit, which was surely done on an editing block with a razor blade back in the day. Took all day to laboriously cue, re-cue and match the edits. A few years afterward, I discovered, thanks to Discogs, that the US 7" was a longer 3:27 edit. So I now have one of those, but have yet to set aside another day.